The Midwest electric grid held up against a series of heat waves this past summer. But industry voices say as states such as Minnesota add more renewable energy, maintaining reliability and boosting transmission space is key.

In the past decade, 81% of new electricity-generation capacity in Minnesota has come from sources such as wind and solar. JoAnn Thompson, vice president for asset management at Otter Tail Power, said it's encouraging to see this shift, with analysts noting renewables are proving to be more cost-effective. However, she said all this energy needs a place to go.

"These transmission lines have a capacity limit," she said, "so they can only take so much generation being flowed over these lines."

She said finding more space would help her utility reach its clean-energy goals and deliver affordable power to customers.

The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) recently reported another record application period for renewable projects. MISO also just approved 18 new long-range transmission projects across the upper Midwest, but it will take several years for them to be operational.

Thompson said they're appealing to regulators to do all they can to see these upcoming projects meet all the necessary requirements to avoid even longer timelines, "and that collaboration and coordination is going to be very critical to ensure that we're able to timely develop and construct the necessary transmission."

Mike Schowalter, senior policy associate for clean electricity with the group Fresh Energy, said having a clogged transmission system means extra infrastructure work to accommodate certain projects, making them a little more costly in the short term. Ideally, he said, the region needs a grid that isn't specifically designed for power from fossil fuels.

"It's shifting to where it's sunnier or where it's windier," he said, "and we need to rebuild that grid in order to actually take advantage of those resources."

He said doing so would result in a more even distribution of renewable energy, allowing all parts of Minnesota and beyond to access these sources.

By Miranda Lipton for Reasons to be Cheerful.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Across the United States, landfills are accumulating trash faster than materials can decompose. In the nearly 2,000 landfills in the US, food waste contributes over 50 percent of fugitive methane emissions from municipal solid waste landfills, those invisible plumes of potent greenhouse gas emissions that seep out of landfills and into the atmosphere.

Landfills rank as the third-largest human-generated source of methane emissions in the US, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). While diverting trash altogether would be the preferred outcome for pollution reduction, about 500 landfills across the country have turned to a novel way of combating pollution from the waste that is ending up in landfills: capturing the gas emitted from organic materials and transforming it into electricity.

"Methane is already in our environment today. You either use it or lose it," says Mike Bakas, alluding to the methane that is wasted if it's not captured. Bakas leads all landfill projects and renewable natural gas business at Ameresco, a company that designs, builds and operates renewable energy plants for landfills around the US.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, about 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping atmospheric heat. Capturing it removes the gas's ability to stimulate the greenhouse effect that comes with its infiltration into our atmosphere.

Landfills that utilize Landfill Gas-to-Energy (LFGTE) systems, which allow for the conversion of methane to energy, are equipped with infrastructure designed to collect the gas, often encased with a layer of clay or synthetic membrane to prevent gas from escaping into the atmosphere. Once collected, the methane can be utilized in one of a few ways, as electricity to use on-site or feed into the local power grid, or as natural gas.

The amount of energy generated through LFGTE projects varies widely depending on the size and age of the landfill, the composition of waste and the efficiency of the gas collection system.

One massive landfill that spans 629 acres in Virginia produces enough landfill gas (LFG) to create 70,000 megawatt hours of energy each year - that's enough to power about 6,700 homes for a year, based on the average US household's annual electricity consumption.

While most landfills using LFGTE are actively collecting waste, not all of them are. "We've got a landfill that's been shut down for about 10 years and we still have another 10 to 20 years of gas in it," says Bakas.

Puente Hills in California is the largest LFGTE program in the country, producing enough energy to power about 70,000 homes. Before the Puente Hills landfill closed in 2013, it was the largest landfill in the US, spanning 700 acres and reaching a whopping height of 500 feet above ground level.

These types of projects first came on the scene in the mid-1970s, and experienced a big rise in popularity in the '90s - largely due to the fact that, in 1994, the EPA began encouraging landfill operators to develop LFGTE projects through its Landfill Methane Outreach Program.

So why isn't every landfill owner taking advantage of its latent treasure trove of energy? Funding, mostly.

According to Bakas, LFGTE systems can cost between $10 million and $100 million to implement.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provided tax deductions for landfills to install these systems, but there are still limitations that prohibit smaller landfills from being able to finance LFGTE. Specifically, the IRA didn't explicitly permit the use of Investment Tax Credits (ITC) for LFGTE projects, something Bakas says the industry is pushing for, as it would go a long way in helping smaller landfill projects that wouldn't otherwise be economically feasible.

There are also caveats embedded among the IRA's tax offerings that restrict landfills from receiving any of these benefits unless its owner owns both the landfill collection system and the energy processing plant, which, according to Bakas, is often not the case.

"So we need the treasury to come out and say, you can own either one or both, which would free us up to invest money in the equipment we need to do it," says Bakas.

And supporting these projects isn't just good for our air quality and atmosphere, but potentially for our pockets too. The dollars put into building these systems can be returned through the sale of electricity. And in some regions, landfill gas projects can generate renewable energy credits, which can be sold to utilities needing to meet renewable energy standards, providing an additional revenue stream.

But these projects aren't always profitable, and some may not have the capacity to ever be.

"To the extent that the site is economic, which I don't think it's a guarantee that it is, operators would probably look at how much [energy] can we produce ... and how close are we to where the energy can be used?" says Daniel Bresette, president of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute.

Bresette says that if a plant is processing landfill gas for electricity, as opposed to other types of energy, the plant may be able to do so with existing equipment, and with less concern for where the landfill is located. This is because the electricity can be fed directly into the energy grid, rather than needing to be transferred off-site to be processed.

The EPA estimates that a project that requires the installation of a new capture system would cost about $8.5 million to install and maintain, and would cost about another $3.5 million over the course of its 15-year lifespan. That number would drop dramatically for a project that doesn't require the support of a supplemental capture facility to process the LFG. It would also drop if tax credits, carbon credits or on-site electricity are utilized.

Landfills of a certain size are required by the Clean Air Act to install and operate gas collection systems. For those that don't meet sizing requirements, the industry is pushing for more government support.

"If the treasury confirms that we can use the ITC tax credits under the IRA towards these projects, then those smaller projects that were not economic might very well become economic," says Bakas.


Miranda Lipton wrote this article for Reasons to be Cheerful.


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New York's Building Code Council is set to include the All-Electric Buildings Act in its 2025 code update.

The 2023 law bans natural gas and other fossil fuels in new buildings. All-electric cooking and heating will be required for new buildings of less than seven stories by 2026, and 2029 for taller buildings.

Michael Hernandez, New York policy director with Rewiring America, said it's one thing to pass laws and quite another to implement them.

"It is vitally important that we stop digging ourselves in a hole by building new buildings with fossil-fuel combustion systems installed in them," said Hernandez. "Those fossil-fuel combustion systems would be in place for the next 20 years, if not longer."

He added that it's impractical to install fossil-fuel systems that would be phased out before the end of its lifespan.

The council will hold a public comment period before voting on the new code language. Buildings are 32% of New York's annual greenhouse gas emissions - making them the state's largest emitter.

To meet its 2050 net-zero emissions goal, the state has to install 396,000 heat pumps above expected sales.

While the new language applies to new buildings, other programs exist for homeowners and building owners to go green.

Hernandez noted that funds from the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law are helping existing buildings convert to electricity.

He said this all begins with a free home energy audit from NYSERDA.

"They'll have a qualified contractor come look at your house," said Hernandez, "and say, 'okay, these are the energy efficiency measures that you would benefit from, and these efficiency measures will make your energy costs go down.' "

Those contractors can help homeowners receive state and federal rebates to implement the recommended measures.

Low-income New Yorkers can qualify for 100% of electrification and climate efficiency rebates depending on a person's household income.

By Ysabelle Kempe for SmartCitiesDive.
Broadcast version by Eric Galatas for Colorado News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Ambitious climate goals are bringing cities and counties face-to-face with a serious reality: the need for carbon dioxide removal.

Years ago, those concerned about the impacts of climate change were optimistic that reducing greenhouse gas emissions worldwide would be enough to address the problem. That era has passed. We've reached a point where carbon dioxide must also be removed from the atmosphere to meet international climate goals, according to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Although the private sector is spearheading many of the carbon dioxide removal projects currently underway, some U.S. local governments are beginning to consider leading such efforts. A survey of 128 city and county climate action plans revealed that about a third include specific mention of carbon dioxide removal, according to a 2023 report by carbon management firm Carbon Direct and Boulder County, Colorado.

"A growing number of [cities] have discovered that it's not going to be easy to [accomplish net-zero emissions] just through decarbonization," said Chris Neidl, impact director at Rethinking Removals, a nonprofit that aims to grow the carbon removal industry. "Carbon removal is [a strategy] that the vanguard of those places has already arrived at."

It's still a new concept for local governments to be the ones taking the lead on carbon removal projects. Even among the 128 local climate action plans highlighted in Carbon Direct and Boulder County's report, many describe carbon removal as a secondary benefit of actions that primarily address other issues. Cambridge, Massachusetts, for example, plans to plant trees for shade. The fact that trees suck up and store planet-warming carbon dioxide is a bonus, the report says.

The term carbon removal casts a large net, describing the process of drawing planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it for decades, centuries or longer. Carbon removal strategies are usually categorized in two buckets: nature-based solutions like reforestation and technology-based solutions like direct air capture.

"The localities have often focused on nature-based [solutions] because the technology-based are more expensive. There's less known about them," said Wil Burns, co-director of American University's Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal.

However, local governments could play a meaningful role in bringing down the cost of the technology by serving as laboratories for testing small-scale projects, he said. "Because the cost is so high, we're not getting sufficient demand for carbon removal," he said. "But we're not going to get sufficient demand until the costs come down."

Local projects "can show what doesn't work before we start trying to spend huge amounts of money at the national level," Burns said. Already, the Biden administration has poured billions of dollars into supporting direct air capture technology.

But carbon removal, especially done with technology-based solutions, is controversial. Critics including scientists and climate advocates worry that it's a distraction from the unfinished imperative of transitioning off fossil fuels - a concern bolstered by oil companies' public enthusiasm for carbon removal as a way to continue selling fossil fuels for years to come. Additionally, environmental justice advocates have criticized the fact that some operations for carbon removal projects are sited near neighborhoods long burdened with industrial pollution.

Local carbon removal in practice

Undertaking a carbon removal project can be daunting for local governments that lack the technical expertise, staff and money to "do it right," Burns said. "There's ways to do [carbon removal] responsibly," he said, "and there's ways to do it irresponsibly."

Even seemingly simple nature-based projects must be carefully planned to deliver the intended effect. "If you don't have the capital to maintain those trees, a lot of times those trees die in a couple of years," Burns said.

Measuring the amount of carbon dioxide such projects remove presents another technical hurdle. "If you can't measure, it didn't happen. That's no overstatement," Neidl said, noting that measurement, reporting and verification processes are improving.

Burns pointed to Boulder as the type of jurisdiction poised to succeed at carbon removal. "They're backed by a large research university there that does a lot of its own carbon removal," he said. "The state of Colorado provides resources."

Boulder County is also a founding member of the 4Corners Carbon Removal Coalition, a network of six local governments in Colorado, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico committed to undertaking locally led carbon removal projects.

Last year, the coalition's first campaign awarded $390,000 in grants to four local projects that store carbon pulled from the atmosphere in concrete.

In Flagstaff, Arizona, for example, a masonry plant will be retrofitted to capture from the air carbon dioxide, which it will use to cure concrete blocks. A project in Durango, Colorado, will build wall panels from industrial hemp, which removes carbon from the air via photosynthesis faster than any other agricultural rotation crop, according to 4Corners. That project will also store carbon in the form of biochar in cement-like building materials. Biochar is a stable, durable form of carbon created by partially combusting organic matter in the presence of limited oxygen.

Concrete-focused projects have emerged as a promising carbon removal avenue for local governments for several reasons. The process of storing carbon in concrete is well understood, Burns said. Plus, municipalities are some of the largest concrete customers, 4Corners co-founder and Director Ramón Alatorre said. "There are concrete facilities pretty much scattered all over the world, nearby any sort of urban and non-urban space," he said. "Any projects that we could demonstrate as being able to work at a block facility in Flagstaff, that's inherently replicable."

Alatorre said that at this early stage, his group is more concerned with projects' scalability and replicability than how much carbon they individually remove from the atmosphere.

"That said, we want to see good measurement," he said. "We want high-quality carbon removal, but if it's a project that's only going to remove less than 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide, that could be fine in terms of wanting to catalyze something that has potential."

Now, 4Corners is working on a campaign to support projects that leverage what it calls "liability" biomass to remove and durably store carbon from the atmosphere. That biomass can be small trees, branches and other residue that accumulates in overgrown forests or is left by logging operations, or it could be yard waste and municipal organics. Such biomass sources are rich in carbon that has been removed from the air, but without intervention, they soon release carbon back into the atmosphere as they decompose or burn, Alatorre said. The forest residues also pose other risks, he added: They can increase wildfire risk and challenge reforestation efforts.

What's next for local carbon removal

Carbon removal efforts by municipalities outside of what Burns calls the "usual cast" of communities that are progressive on climate action, like Boulder, "may bode well" for the uptake of locally led carbon removal projects, he said. But it's not yet clear whether such homegrown efforts will become mainstream, he said.

"A lot of cities are contemplating that carbon removal is going to be part of their net-zero plans," Burns said. "But I think most of [them are] contemplating they're just going to farm out and buy [carbon] credits."

For local governments interested in this work, explicitly incorporating carbon removal into net-zero plans "is a really important first step," Rethinking Removal's Neidl said. Local and state decision-makers can incorporate environmental justice requirements in carbon removal policy, he added, pointing to a Massachusetts bill that would require state-supported projects to be approved by the director of environmental justice.

A California group is looking to create a model for bringing the community into the development of industrial carbon removal. The Community Alliance for Direct Air Capture - equipped with $3 million in federal funding - plans to work with residents in the San Joaquin Valley to determine whether and how a carbon removal facility should be built in the community. If the project doesn't gain the community's support, the coalition has promised to halt it, E&E News reports.

Local governments can also recruit "objective" consultancies, nonprofits or university groups to help manage carbon removal projects, Burns said. "They can help provide some initial guidance to avoid some of the pitfalls."

As state governments become increasingly savvy on carbon removal, local governments can also look to them for resources, he said.

"You have states like Washington, California, New York and Massachusetts that are increasingly viewing carbon removal as part of their state plans," he said. "They're contemplating that local governments are going to be partners with them, so they're starting to develop the kind of resources that can help local governments to facilitate those things in a way that's sensible."


Ysabelle Kempe wrote this article for SmartCitiesDive.


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